Radautz

The following email landed in my inbox over the weekend.

 

For those not familiar with the area, Radautz 47°51' N 25°55' E is 31 miles (50 km) south of Chernovitz. Both are in historic Bukovina which is just south of east Galicia. It was part of the Austrian Empire but now the two towns are on opposite sides of the border between Ukraine and Rumania. 

We have two Pikholz families who lived in Radautz, both of them descendants of  Mordecai and Taube Pikholz of Skalat. Mordecai is almost certainly the brother of my great-great-grandfather. 

Moshe and Freide Pikholz

Mordecai and Taube's daughter Chane Chaje (~1823-1896) was married to a man named Eliezer (~1822-1878) a Levi who went by his wife's surname - we do not know what surname he was born with.

Eliezer and Chane Chaje's (first-born) son Chaim (~1849-1910) had eight children that we know of, one of whom is Moshe, who married Friede Kruk of Radautz and at least some of their children were born there. Four of those birth records are included in this project.

Moshe and Freide's son Leiser came to Israel and I know his two children. Moshe's other children were killed in the Shoah. The interesting thing that we see in the index is that Freide is called Kruk/Kruck (pronounced Krik) on three records, but is Ellenberg on the 1906 record of the daughter Chane Chaje. My first instinct is to say that Freide's two parents are Ellenberg and Kruk, though it is not clear which is her father and which is her mother. At least not from the index.

The actual records clarify it for us. Leiser's birth record shows Freide's surname as Ellenberg, but that is crossed out and Kruk is written in its place. That sounds to me as though Ellenberg is her father and Kruk her mother and someone realized afterwards that their marriage was not registered. They are from Kolomea.

The record of the youngest of the four - Raizie Mindel - specifies that Freide's parents are indeed Israel Ellenberg and Jente Kruk.

Freide's own birth record does not appear in the Kolomea records, but her sisters' do. And her mother Jente's 1911 death gives the names of HER parents.

Benjamin Hersch and Rivka Bernstein

I have not seen any relevant death records in the Radautz database, but there are some marriages and in particular this:

Benjamin Hersch Bernstein, born 1876, married Rifke Pikholz, born 1877. Rifke is the daughter of Chaim Jankel and Gitel of Olsowze. We know Chaim Yaakov (Jankel) and his wife as the head of our Buczacz family. Chaim Yaakov is the son of Mordecai and Taube Pikholz of Skalat.

I do not see a listing for Olsowze in the JewishGen Gazeteer, but there is a village called Olesha 49°07' N 25°16' E, which is 6.5 miles from Buczacz which could be the right place.

We know of five children of Benjamin Hersch and Rifke - Chaim Juda, Rachel Ziwje, Isak, Abraham and Gitel - and the Radautz database has all five birth records.

These five records confirm what we already know and do not add  anything knew aside from the births themselves. I had been hoping to find the surname of Rifke's mother Gittel.

The Bernstein clan lived in Radautz and the children of Benjamin Hersch and his brother have given names in common, so it will take a bit of additional analysis to identify the next generation in the Radautz records. (Note to self...)

I have had contact with a few descendants here in Israel, but they have been singularly uncooperative.

I really appreciate the work of Bruce, Edgar and their team in getting this material transcribed and making it available at no charge.

Housekeeping notes - coming attractions

22 August 2019, 6:30 – Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh, Multi-purpose Room of the Heinz History Center
Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?

25 August 2019, 1:30 Jewish Genealogy Society of Maryland, Pikesville Library, 1301 Reiserstown Road

I shall be part of the Ask The Experts panel

27 August 2019 -  Wake Forest University Campus, 1834 Wake Forest Road, Winston -Salem, NC, sponsored by university's Office of Jewish Life.

4:00 - (Student program) Lessons in Jewish DNA: One Man’s Successes and What He Learned On the Journey

5:15 - (open to the public) Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?

Pittsburgh, Baltimore, North Carolina

22 August 2019, 6:30 – Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh, Multi-purpose Room of the Heinz History Center
Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?

25 August 2019, 1:30 Jewish Genealogy Society of Maryland, Pikesville Library, 1301 Reiserstown Road

I shall be part of the Ask The Experts panel

27 August 2019 -  Wake Forest University Campus, 1834 Wake Forest Road, Winston -Salem, NC, sponsored by university's Office of Jewish Life.

4:00 - (Student program) Lessons in Jewish DNA: One Man’s Successes and What He Learned On the Journey

5:15 - (open to the public) Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?

The Parents of the Mościska Fathers

A few weeks ago, this dropped into my inbox.

Subject: New records on the All Galicia Database
From: Gesher Galicia SIG <sig@geshergalicia.org>
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2019 11:38:03 +0100
X-Message-Number: 3
New vital records and Jewish taxpayer records are now available for all
to search on the All Galicia Database <https://search.geshergalicia.org>.
A. Vital records
- Mielnica (Melnytsya). Jewish deaths, 1820-1851 (162 records)
- Mosciska (Mostyska). Jewish births, 1909-1924 (1,259 records)
- Witkow Nowy (Novyi Vytkiv). Jewish births 1829-1861 (447 records)

As is my wont, I had a look, using the "Records added" option and choosing "in the past month."

The search produced two results, both in Mosciska (also known as Mostyska) which is about a third of the way from Przemysl to Lwow. It is not a town where I have ever seen any Pikholz.

The results included a major surprise. Look at what I marked in red.

The standard Galician birth records list the parents of the mother - and in Lwow the mother's mother's birth surname, at least in some years - but nothing about the father aside from his home town and occupation. But look at what we have here. 

In the first record, it shows both of the father's parents, with given names and birth surnames, as well as the mother's hometown. But oddly, not the father's. It also tells us where the parents of the child were married. The second record has all that, except the mother's surname.

This is a very big deal and I have not seen it in any other towns. There are not a lot of Mosciska birth records in JRI-Poland but the ones I found in the early 1900s had this information as well. So my impression is that this is a local custom, rather than one that simply showed up after the First World War.

How I wish we had those in Rozdol, Skalat and elsewhere!

In the case of Hirsch, the son of Benjamin Pickholz and Reisel Lowin, I did not know the parents of Benjamin. I have a birth record for Benjamin and did not have a wife or children for him. Without the paternal information in Mosciska, I would have had no way of identifying the one in this birth record as the one in the 1893 Rozdol birth.

The second record is from the Skalat part of the family. I know the maternal grandmother; she married in Podwoloczysk and her Pikholz mother was from Husiatyn. In fact, I already have both her 1893 birth record and her Podwoloczysk marriage record. This new birth record, from Mosciska, gives us the son Mechel.

Mechel's mother Brane has three grandchildren here in Israel and this record has given me another opportunity to break their collective silence on all things genealogical. One was once a neighbor of mine and all he was willing to say is "We are not from Galicia, WE are from VIENNA!".

Housekeeping notes

1. I shall be in the US for two weeks, beginning two weeks from now, visiting some of my elders. I have one presentation planned and two or three others pending.

22 August 2019, 6:30 – Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh, Multi-purpose Room of the Heinz History Center Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?

2. Family Tree DNA is having a sale through August. Here are the major discounts. There are additional discounts on upgrades.